


Writing Shop

by Ori_Cat



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Reddit Writing Prompts, Reposted following reviewal, TV Tropes, stories about stories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-23
Updated: 2018-03-23
Packaged: 2019-04-07 03:45:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14072178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ori_Cat/pseuds/Ori_Cat
Summary: Written for a Reddit writing prompt: "You're in a writing shop. On display are plots, stock characters, writing prompts, hero's journeys...What happens next?"Original prompt can be found here: https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/comments/40xris/wp_youre_in_a_writing_shop_on_display_are_plots/





	Writing Shop

“Was this store always here?” 

“Hmmm?” my friend Kira mumbles through a bite of apple. This is our Saturday routine: we go downtown, she buys her groceries and looks over all the stall at the market, and then we walk to Beehive so I can get some wool. She always pets the skeins while I decide. “Oh, yeah, it’s been there for ages.” 

But… “Had it been there for ages last week, though?” 

She looks at me strangely. “What’re you on about?” 

“Probably nothing. Probably I’ve just never noticed it before. But I want to check anyway.” 

A little bell dingles as we come in. The interior looks just as cluttered and wonderful as all other little curio stores. There’s a counter on the left, the older woman manning it is reading a magazine, and all the walls are lined with shelves, holding papers and bottles and cans and models. The rest of the floor is taken up by those lovely little cubbyholes, like they sell beads from. 

“Oh, cool. What are those?” she asks. The cubbyhole tables are all filled with tokens, about loonie-size, and each has a little shape on it. Like if checkers met Magic: The Gathering. The one I’m holding has a tiny green tree on it. I peer at the cubbyhole it came from. Gaia’s Lament, the tag says. In the next cubby the trees are darker, and the tag reads Gaia’s Revenge. Are these for a game or something? 

“Excuse me?” I say. The woman at the counter doesn’t look up from her reading. “Excuse me!” 

“Yes, dear?” She sets down the book and comes over. 

“What are these?” I show her the two tokens. 

“This is the plots section. That one-“ she tilts her head to read the labels “-is for the destruction of nature, and that one is for when nature fights back.” She smiles at me. “I should also let you know that MacGuffins are on sale today, forty percent off.” 

In theory, what she says makes complete sense. Practically… “What do you mean? How can you buy a plot?” 

“We’re a story shop, dear. Says so above the door. Anything you might want for a story, we’ll have it. Do you need me to show you around?” 

“Maybe, yeah. What have you got?” 

“Well,” she begins, “what you’ve found are the basic plots. You can combine them, of course, and we keep some of the rare ones in the back if you can’t find what you’re looking for.” 

I put back the Gaia tokens and flip through some of the others. Homeward has a little brown image of a house on it. Underworld has a black circle. Vengeance has a little cross – maybe it was meant to look like a sword? – and True Love has a heart. 

“What are these two?” I hold up the one I got from a box labeled SXLove, a heart with a star in the middle, and the red sickle-shape from the cubbyhole with C&A on it. “Is this the Communist menace?” 

She takes the heart token. “This is Star-Crossed Lovers, everyone loves those. Show me the other one?” 

I tip the red sickle towards her. “It said C&A.” 

“Oh, then that’s Cain and Abel. The Communists are in characters.” She waves her hand vaguely towards the back right. 

I look back at the token. I ought to be repelled – brother against brother, after all – but it’s strangely attractive, all red and silver, and such a comfortable weight, more like a perfect skipping-stone than a coin. 

Even so, I ask the woman if she has anything more Jacob-and-Esau-y. 

“If you add a Happy Ending it’s the same thing.” 

“Okay.” I roll the token in my fingers. “I think I’ll keep this one. Show me around the rest of the store.” 

She starts heading towards the left back of the store. “Here’s the MacGuffins-“ she waves at a second table with a partitioned top. I can see a box full of crystals and a token with I think a black briefcase on it in a quick glance. 

“-and here are the settings. There’s the maps at the top-“ 

We’re in the back left of the store, in front of one of those locking metal storage shelves that never fits all your stuff. It’s overflowing with crumpled sheets of paper in messy stacks, almost covering the labels stuck to the shelves. I read L-Justified, R-Justified, S-Justified, N-Justified, Island, Close-Up. 

“-and the planets and moons at the bottom.” At about knee-height, the shelves are filled with boxes instead, each one full of what looks like little marbles. I kneel down to inspect them. There’s the Desert box filled with browns, yellows, and reds, frosty white spheres in the Ice box, and oddly familiar blue-and-green swirled planets in the Earthlike box. “I keep the suns in the back,” the woman says. “They keep longer.” 

That’s something I never thought I’d hear anyone say. 

I find Kira in the Characters section, the part that I had first thought was models. She frowns at the woman as we come up. “Your action figures aren’t very diverse,” she says. “I mean, they’re not all men and that’s good, but there are hardly any other minorities represented. What company do you get these from?” 

The woman smiles at her. “They’re all the basic version, dear. Add-ons are on that table behind you.” 

While they talk, I pick up one of the cans stacked beside the character display. Mooks, it reads, Armoured Human. 500 by weight. I give it an idle shake. Inside, are they thinking “earthquake”? 

The only other shelf I haven’t looked at is the one I noticed with all the bottles, off to the far right. Bottles and cans don’t sit very well on the metal shelves, I know, so maybe that’s the reason this shelf is made of particle board instead, the cheap kind they use for school interior decorating. The bottles are set in little clusters with only one label for each, like the grocery store. There are tiny jars of Red, Green, Pearl, and other colours, each looking the reddest red or the greenest green I’ve ever seen. I wonder if they would work as dyes. What sort of colours would you end up with if you used, not normal blue acid dye, but pure essence of blueness? What would it taste like as a food colour? 

“Oh, I see you’ve found the insubstantial ingredients,” the woman says from behind me. I almost drop the large, clear bottle I picked up. It glugs deeply. 

“What’s in here?” 

“Bulk sarcasm. We couldn’t shift any smaller sizes.” 

That sounds so true I giggle. All books seem to either take themselves very seriously or be full or sarcasm. No half measures for the writers. 

On the shelf below the sarcasm, which I carefully put back, are stacks of small vials, like the ones they sell seed beads or Krazy Glue in. But these one look like they hold coils of cord. Must be very special cord, as usually it comes in skeins or balls. The labels read Eros for the red, Storge for the burgundy, Philia for the blue. I ask the woman what they are. 

“It’s love, dear,” she says. “The different kinds. You can take it out to look, if you like.” 

“Like in the manga,” Kira says over my shoulder. “When the girl and guy have their hands tied together with the red string, and it means they’re a couple.” 

The woman gives her an appreciative look. “Yes, exactly like that.” 

I pull of the top of a vial and pour the coil of storge out into my hand. “There isn’t very much of it.” 

“It always looks less when it’s coiled. Stretch it out.” 

I find the end and start wrapping the cord around my right fingers. I wrap and wrap and wrap – wow, there’s at least several feet – and eventually, I have a large ball of cord around my right hand, and my fingers are hurting from being squeezed, and the coil in my left hand looks the exact same size. Infinite cord. What could I do with that, I think. 

I squeeze the cord bundle off my hand and back into its little container. “I’m taking this too.” 

“Sure. Anything else, dear?” 

I check my watch. It’s already after four o’clock. We’ve been wasting a lot of time in here; Beehive will be closed soon if we don’t hurry. “No, that’s all.” I follow over to the counter to pay. 

“Is that a gun?” Kira asks. Sure enough, leaning up against the side of the counter is an old rifle. It hasn’t got any sort of label. Maybe you have to ask separately. 

“Sure is, dear. Some Russian man left it in here as payment one time.” 

“Russian?” I ask. 

“Yes, he had a beard, glasses. I don’t suppose you know him? Anyway, we haven’t been able to resell it, and there’s only one anyhow. Are you two interested?” 

I gape at her. “Surely you’re not serious.” 

“Of course I’m serious. And it’s Lavender, dear. Can I ring you up?” 

Her counter is the typical small-shop counter, with the unique or just-in products set around the edge. Her pile of magazines is falling over next to the cash register, and to the left – just where it looks dangerously within reach of an elbow – there’s a bowl filled with slim rings. A handwritten sign taped to the side reads FREE. “Ooh, they’re free!” Kira reaches to grab one. 

I slap her hand away. “Don’t touch those!” 

“Why not?” 

I turn to Lavender. “What’s the deal with these?” 

“I don’t know what you mean, dear.” 

“I mean, if you take one do you have to forfeit love forever?” 

“No.” 

“Does it turn you into some undead wraith thing?” 

“No.” 

“Will it multiply and multiply and fill your closet with copies?” 

“No. They’re perfectly ordinary iron rings. Free trinkets convince people to come in, help with business.” 

“Oh.” I feel a bit dumb, but considering what my hands are full of… “It’s all right, you can take one,” I tell Kira. She starts fitting them onto her fingers while I lay my purchases on the counter. “How much for these?” 

“Half a dozen fresh eggs. Actually, no, make it five, it’s not a rare plot.” 

“We don’t have any eggs.” What is this, the Middle Ages? “Can we pay with something else?” 

“Sure, dear. Just a minute.” She pulls out a sheet of paper from under the counter and checks it. “Would a memory of a childhood afternoon do better?” 

“Do you take Canadian dollars?” 

“Yes, of course. It’s six-fifty Canadian. Plus your tax, of course.” 

I dig the money out of my pocket and lay it on the counter, and tuck the container of storge and the Cain & Abel token into my coat. Kira’s found herself a ring she likes, so we leave and go to Beehive, the bell above the door tinkling again behind us. 

But for the first time, I’m not amazed by the inside of the store. I used to think that the wool colours were like jewels; I would look at the variegated strands to see how many different shades I could distinguish. It seems sort of dull now. I hope the story shop will still be there on the way back. 

Eventually, I pick out some yarn – a ball of variegated red-plum and a ball of a dark mauve-y berry colour. Everyone says that reds and purples don’t go well together, but I like the combination. You just need to pick the right shades. Kira goes off to take the bus home, and I pay for my yarn, stick that in my bag, and leave. 

Thankfully, as I walk back, the store hasn’t yet gone off to wherever little stores that weren’t there yesterday go when they aren’t there tomorrow. I didn’t really take a look in the windows before. There is indeed a handwritten sign proclaiming MACGUFFIN SALE!, one of those Store Hours signs suction-cupped to the door and not written on, and, in the corner of the window, Help Wanted. 

Help Wanted? 

The bell rings again as I go in. I wonder if it’s an electronic bell, because I can’t see a real one hanging up there. Lavender is still at the counter, flipping through her magazine. “Oh, you’re back,” she says. “What can I help you with now?” 

“Uh,” I start. “Your sign says Help Wanted.” 

“Yes, dear, it does. And…?” 

“Um, is the position still available?” 

“Yes, it is. It’s not very easy to get good help for a store like this. Did you want to apply?” 

Well, yes, I do, it seems like a cooler job than my normal one at the bank, even considering the supplement of selling my weaving at the craft fairs. On the other hand, though, the real world seems more secure. “Why is the position empty?” 

She grins at me. “I see we’ve got a smart one. Don’t worry, dear, nothing untowards happened to the last girl. She got a beau, decided to stay with him.” 

“What about the one before that?” 

“I can assure you,” she says, “that the job is safe. I do all the complicated stuff.” 

I ask about the pay, and how you’re supposed to come to work every day when the store moves worlds every day. It turns out that the wages aren’t that bad – somewhat inconsistent, Lavender says, because it’s only in some places that stories do good business, Earth is almost a dead zone – and besides, with only two employees you don’t need to turn a huge profit. As for the transport, apparently she can connect me with a door on Earth, like she did for the last girl. I hope it doesn’t end up in my closet, that would be awkward. 

And like that, I’m hired. It certainly was more complicated applying for the bank job. Maybe dimension-hopping stores like this one don’t get many applicants. The last thing I ask Lavender is how she’ll keep the store for me to find again once I get things sorted out with the bank. 

“I’ll bring it back here the day after tomorrow. It can be your first day, dear.” 

“Do you promise?” I don’t want this to all be a trick. Little stores that weren’t there yesterday, in the books, are often staffed as capriciously as they move. 

“Yes, I do.” 

“Do you swear?” 

She grins at me. “Glad to see you know the difference. You’re clearly already experienced. I do swear. Be here at eight o’clock, the day after tomorrow.” 

She waves me goodbye as I go. It’s already starting to get dark. I’ll probably be catching the last bus tonight. 

When I look back, the clothing store is abutting the Chinese food restaurant, and the story shop is nowhere to be seen.


End file.
